Posted
by
kdawson
on Friday August 24, 2007 @03:14PM
from the everything-but-the-visual-voicemail dept.

A very large number of readers sent in stories about one or the other of the two new claims to have unlocked the iPhone for use on other GSM carriers. A New Jersey teenager, George Hotz, posted instructions for unlocking the iPhone using a soldering gun and a lot of patience. This is from coverage in a local NJ paper: "If someone handed him an iPhone new out of the box, he could modify it in 'about an hour,' he said. A person following his directions might take 'a good 12 hours,' the teen estimated." Hotz has put up a YouTube video substantiating his claim, and is conducting an eBay auction for one of his two hacked phones. The other hack is by a commercial outfit called iPhoneSIMfree.com, whose claim Engadget has verified. The company will be selling licenses to the hack, minimum quantity 500, at a price not yet announced. These hacks are much bigger news for those outside America. Expect to see an industry spring up to meet European (and Asian?) demand for freed iPhones.

The guy's blog is not responding - he's got to know this means nothing but heartache for him going forward. What was it...like four guys and three of them conned the kid into going public. Very public...?

Lawyers my eye, this is probably covered by the DMCA reverse engineering, same as for unlocking XBoxes and so forth. Simply purchasing an iPhone does not convey complete ownership and the right to dismantle protections under such law. Worse, offering up the modified iPhone on eBay, which I expect to see cancelled, will not simply bring grief from AT&T, but Apple as well. (It's currently up to $15K, which I doubt will be honoured.) It's best if someone does unlock the iPhone for other GSM services to keep their yap shut and use it as they see fit. Sadly, ego must be fed, but at what price?

Lawyers my eye, this is probably covered by the DMCA reverse engineering, same as for unlocking XBoxes and so forth.

The DMCA prevents the circunvention of DRM technologies for copyright infringing purposes. Whose copyrights (or other kind of IP for that matter) are infringed if you unlock an iPhone you purchased from Apple? It isn't been subsidized in any way from AT&T, nor have you any contractual relationship with them.

Simply purchasing an iPhone does not convey complete ownership and the right to dismantle protections under such law

There's nothing to stop you unlocking any other phone (in Europe anyway), so I doubt the iPhone will be any different. If anything, if Apple tries to prevent it, I could see the European Commission stepping in.

That's a problem for you as an individual hacker. I suspect it'll be less of a problem for that corp. that did the software hack; they'll just make their own official certification for iPhones hacked with their software.

Except (AFAIK) you need to have certified you equipment for radio transmission. And since you've physically hacked your phone, my guess is the Apple certification doesn't count anymore.

There's nothing physical (hardware, that is) about this hack, at least not for the iphonesimfree.com hack. And as long as the software doesn't make any modifications to the way the radio behaves (which I would imagine it doesn't), it should be just fine.

"buy them in the US, unlock them and export them? I presume the iphone supports the european bands as well as the american ones."

Heck, what about the US? I'm wondering if the phone is unlocked....there is nothing preventing you from theoretically using it with a T-Mobile account in the US is there?

Bringing up another question....what if T-Mobile put in infrastructure to support iPhone visual voicemail...and other goodies that AT&T does...if they reversed engineered it in a 'clean' room, could they no

Doesn't Apple get a share of revenue from each AT&T contract? I would expect them to respond to this asap.

Sure, they'll probably respond (and I'd wager that they'll wait until AFTER the phone sells on eBay--you know, to ensure some legal technicality ensues due to the sale) but really, if their business model relies (at least partially) on the revenue of another company, then shame on them.

Perhaps you can draw up a Five Year Plan for the video game industry and we can implement it after the Revolution, comrade.

I'll work on rounding up the proletariat to design games for the People, so we can all play without anyone being trampled under these bourgeois capitalists who build electronics for money and orchestrate evil plots to make their products more attractive through proprietary software.

--ZDNet's George Ou Exposed as Ignorant Microsoft Shill (Zoon!) [roughlydrafted.com]The assault on reason isn't just a political phenomenon. Microsoft has long been developing its own cast of apologists who have eked out full time careers in the field of sputtering out ignorant, unfounded claims with such insistence and volume that the undecided simply have no alternative but to line up and applaud their seemingly convincing rhetoric. Among them is George Ou, who unsurprisingly blogs for CNET's ZDNet branded website.

Apple iPhone vs the FIC Neo1973 OpenMoko Linux Smartphone [roughlydrafted.com]Frequently compared to Apple's new smartphone, the OpenMoko FIC Neo1973 is described as the free and open software community's alternative to Apple's officially closed iPhone platform. Here's a look at what it really is and how it compares to the iPhone.

But do they have more to gain from selling the hardware, or from their cut of the revenue? Estimates of profits on the hardware are anywhere from 23% ($138) [eetimes.com] to 55% ($329) [infoworld.com] of the cost of the phones (for the $599 iPhone, not sure about the $499 one). According to your links, Apple gets either $3 per contract ($72 over 2 years) or $11 ($264 over 2 years), depending on whether the AT&T customer is new to AT&T or not.

Depending on the balance of new customers to old (and 4GB iPhones to 8GB iPhones), Apple may just make more money by letting people buy the phone and use it with any provider, especially considering that the legal fees to try to enforce the locked phone policy would probably wipe out any difference in revenue from lost AT&T customers. That's provided that AT&T doesn't make too much of a stink with Apple about it. In any case, I'm sure the number of people who actually will end up unlocking their phones will be relatively small, so even AT&T doesn't have much to worry about, and Apple can enjoy those few extra sales that they'll get from it.

Since I'm in Canada I'm SOL without either Apple offering the iPhone here, or using a cracked version.

Except that you're still pretty much SOL, as you're stuck with having to sign up with Rogers and pay them an arm and a leg to use the iPhone data services (outside of a suitable WiFi area, at least).

Or you could choose to sign up with Fido (which is owned by Rogers) but instead charges you a leg and an arm for the same services. And a few other appendages if you want to access Roger's "expanded network

because lord knows the iPhone is so important to business that not only do you need one, you need your company to buy it for you and pay for it.So basically what you are complaining about is that they won't help circumvent tax laws so you can basically get the phone for free cheap schmuck..

Here's a better idea figure out how you are going to explain to your tax auditor how the iPhone is a warranted business expense... I suppose next you are going to have "your" company buy you a ferrari too and claim that a

I think there's another way that Apple loses in this.Despite the exuberance of the dedicated fans, Apple needs to sell to average consumers if they're going to really succeed. It wasn't all the Mac fans buying iPods that made it so successful, it was the millions of regular, normal people who were drawn to a well-designed, innovative product and paying full price for it.

Retail is tricky though, because you have to keep giving customers what they want if you're going to stay on top. One reason Apple is sti

The United States Federal Government lives and dies by smart people. It's the smart people in the government that keep the planes flying, the nuclear weapons from blowing up in our faces, the law making halfway descent sense, and who translate the will of the elected charismatics into something mostly practical.

What the government doesn't want is smart rebels. Something entirely different from the larger subset of "smart people."

You call going on national TV with all the details and a big shit-eating grin plastered on his iFace, smart? "Hey, Mom!! Look at me!! I just pissed off two major north american companies and screwed the warranty on that new phone you bought me!!!"

No, I call it really smart. He did his homework, found the DMCA provision/exemption that allowed him to do EXACTLY what he did, and announced it.... and as neither "pissing off companies" nor "screwing the warranty" is illegal in the US, he just assured himself a future job.

I don't know what the Apple-AT&T contract looks like, but I know in Apple's iTunes contracts, the companies for which it provides protected music require Apple to make "corrections" when someone figures out how to break the protection on the songs.

If the iPhone contract is similar, then Apple may be required to update the iPhone software to attempt to thwart this.

Just keep your eyes open and see what happens to the two sites making claims. If they come down, Apple got to them.

I wonder how many days they'll get away with selling this before (a) lawyers find a reason to shut them down, or (b) someone in the hacking community is motivated by this proof of concept to complete a free hack, or (c) someone reverse-engineers the existing hack and releases a free version..? (will iPhoneSimFree be cheeky enough to 'prohibit' reverse engineering _their_ reverse engineering in the license?)

AT&T most likely has a basis for a lawsuit, but that basis has nothing to do with the Apple-exclusivity contract, since people who hack the phone aren't parties to that contract. The lawsuit would more likely be based on violation of license terms prohibiting the defeat of whatever protection mechanisms are keeping the iPhone locked. And I have no idea whether this would hold up in Europe, where this hack is actually useful.

AT&T most likely has a basis for a lawsuit, but that basis has nothing to do with the Apple-exclusivity contract, since people who hack the phone aren't parties to that contract.

But wouldn't the purchaser be bound by some sort of EULA? Consider DirecTV a number of years back who, despite the end-user purchasing the hardware, owned the access cards. That was eventually stated on the box the end-user purchased. I haven't seen the iPhone packaging, but I presume there is some reference that the purchaser i

STFU - iPhone represents the most proprietary item you can obtain, with a hardware supplier who's not letting anyone but them write software, a software supplier who's famous for not running on any hardware other than that which they created (software supplier and hardware supplier being the same company, for anyone interested in vendor lock-in), and doing an exclusive deal with a monopoly telephone provider, just to put the monopilistic cherry on the proprietary icing.

How the fuck can you compare *that* with OpenMoko, a completely Free phone with a Free firmware, Free Operating System, Free applications, and community of Free Software guys prepared to spend $450 each just to debug the hardware for the benefit of humanity, so that for the first time ever, you can buy a phone that does whatever you want

How the fuck can you compare *that* with OpenMoko, a completely Free phone with a Free firmware, Free Operating System, Free applications, and community of Free Software guys prepared to spend $450 each just to debug the hardware for the benefit of humanity, so that for the first time ever, you can buy a phone that does whatever you want

Fuck, to fucking compare the fuck out of that fucking comparison, I fucking could fucking point out that for fucking fuck's sake, that fuck, it's like fucking OS X, sure fuc

And "how the FUCK" can you fail to notice that currently it is not suitable for users*their exact words [openmoko.org])?

Yes, I am all for OpenMoko and Free Software, I hope they do a great job. But it is absolutely ridiculous for you ignore the fact that for the average non-technical user, a polished, working product that exists now has a real practical value over something that is still in "pre-alpha" (again, their words) development.

The Neo is neat and all, but you don't even have to be that open to do better than the iPhone.

The iPhone is explicitly designed to create vendor lock-in with AT&T. If you want a fully functional smartphone that is unlocked by default, you can get something like a Nokia Communicator [wikipedia.org].

In fact, there are great stacks of phones (all generally unavailable from carriers in the US) that are fully functional smart phones that run on industry-standard Symbian (some even on not-fully-open Linux; hell, even Windows Mobile is better than an iPhone) and have such amazing features as being unlocked and supporting 3rd party apps by default.

The DMCA currently has an explicit exemption surrounding cellular phones locked to a specific provider (at least until November 2009). For more, see Ars Technica [arstechnica.com] or Freedom To Tinker [freedom-to-tinker.com].

There may be other legal avenues they can pursue, but DMCA appears to be out of the running.

Interesting, I was under the impression that the price of the phone was subsidized like phones with Verizon and such, even at the $600 price tag. So the price of the phone is only under the condition that you sign the contract with AT&T.

Yes and no, from what I've gathered, the traditional subsidy that would go to you, goes to apple.
I don't know what legal rammifications there are to skipping activation on AT&T's network, but it doesn't happen at the point of sale.

I'm not trying to belittle his achievement, but I think the fact that geohot autographed the phone with a marker pen can only detract from the value. After distributing instructions to do this yourself and acknowledging that similar auction lots are likely to appear before the end of his, he obviously believes that he's selling a part of iPhone of history. Odd.

Its great to know that they have figured out the JTag interface, but I question how useful any of this is. Meaning, even if you can make/take calls on all the networks, the visual voicemail and SMS would still be non functioning due to software needed on the AT&T network. The SMS probably can be easily fixed by using a different application, but the visual voicemail would definitely be more difficult to get around.

There's many minor problems with their implementation, but the major problem is that it ignores key presses while listening to messages.

I am a longtime T-Mobile customer, and I ALWAYS press 7 to delete my voicemail messages before waiting for them to end. Usually I listen to them long enough to know who it is then delete. I assume their voicemail system is the same nationwide.

If you want to switch from AT&T to another carrier and you have a really expensive iPhone, a working phone with a few of the fancier features nonfunctional is still more useful than a phone that won't work on the other network at all.
There is still voicemail--it just reverts to normal non-visual voicemail. There is still SMS--and on a phone which can use outright e-mail, why do you need SMS?

If you don't mind getting a new phone number, you could use a free service like GrandCentral [grandcentral.com]. It gives you a single phone number that routes calls to your phones based on the caller and your rules, and lets you access all of your voicemail visually from the web. The website uses a flash plugin, but there's a mobile version. I don't have an iPhone, so I can't confirm if it works on mobile Safari.

I'm sure it requires more effort than the built in solution, but it doesn't care who your phone company is.

I would not think that "patching" their visual voicemail app to be that difficult. I do not know how it stores its values, but I suspect that if you spent a couple of hours one could easily figure out its structure, you could probably just put an app that talks to a secondary app on the Asterisk server and pushes the data into the application. I dont have an iPhone, though, so it wont be me doing the work.Also, in my opinion, anyone who honestly believes that a 17 yr "figured out" the iPhone JTag interfac

Apple and AT&T have undoubtably already discussed what they would do if this happened, as it undoubtably would, Apple will probably have to pay a fine to AT&T as per contract, or attempt to fix the issue. Most likely though neither side will care much as the majority of users will simply switch to AT&T rather than trying to install an unlocking utility, as this is Apple's whole mantra and reason people buy Apple products, they would much rather pay for convienence and an easy to use device than having to hack, adjust, and tweak it.

You still have to go through the activation process. There are tons of methods to bypass it though.
Those thinking it's just to unlock the iPhone and get worry free should be aware.
If you have a non-ATT iPhone, You'll still need to re-activate it after every software update from Apple.
That's because iTunes checks your phone for consistency and hacked phones don't pass this test. iTunes will demand a full restoration of the hacked iPhone that creates the need for re-activation.
It's not that difficult to crack the activation process, but if you are not tech savvy you may get into trouble.
After every software update, Apple may change things in iPhone's OS which includes the activation process.
So all activation hacks may stop working overnight. Of course the iPhone hack community will eventually modify the hacks so they adapt to the changes, but keeping track of all of that might be hard for the technological challenged.

You would think any company with a goal of making money by out competing it's competitors in the market would take this moment to jump in the air and yell, "Holy bat shit Bat Man, we have a hell of hit on our hands. We've hit a home run ! People are willing to spend 12 hours moding our gear to get it the way they want it. I bet they'll be willing to spend a ton of money on our stuff. This is fantastic. Lets give them what they want ! We are going to be rich !" I don't think that's what they are going to do though, I think they are going to sue some people. Sorta lets you know where they are coming from doesn't it ? They want to compete by locking you in. Sorta like some other large company I can't remember the name of just now.

Most people choose the iPod for that. Kinda like how the Zune locks you into the Zune store. You could get a WM player, which allows you access to... a lot of stores with the same pricing and content. *twirls finger* It's all about making it easy.

For the same reason that it's perfectly legal for my private high school to "sell me the way" to solve second order differential equations, or for my violin teacher to "sell me the way" to play Bach...

Indeed...you can sign contracts with each customer saying they're not allowed to disclose the process or else, but once it's inevitably "leaked", it's just out there. You certainly can't set the legal system against some random third party who got the information from a website and is now selling their own hacked iPhones.

Personally, I don't even care about the iPhone until it has GPS. As much as I hate the unresponsive and convoluted interface interface, the clumsy buttons, and the general ugliness of my iPaq, having GPS-enabled google maps in my pocket is now an absolutely mandatory requirement for me to even consider another mobile device.

GPS is only good for one thing - telling you where you are.Yet almost all the time, I know exactly where I am. What I want to know is where something else is, and how to get there. Thus for me of primary importance is the map browsing, and at that the iPhone excels since it's so easy to do local searches on an area you are viewing, have it generate directions you can follow a turn at a time, and browse nearby streets to be sure exactly how to get there once you are close. Panning and zooming in and out a

This seems to be the phone equivalent of a modchipped game console, which eBay has explicitly banned from their site. Given the insane amount of attention this is getting and will continue to get, is it likely that they'll simply pull the auction, possibly after receiving a nastygram from AT&T and/or Apple?

I think eBay's reasoning behind preventing modchipped consoles from being auctioned is that they're often used to play pirated games. This iPhone hack allows one to use a different operator, which is not illegal AFAIK.

I think eBay's reasoning behind preventing modchipped consoles from being auctioned is that they're often used to play pirated games. This iPhone hack allows one to use a different operator, which is not illegal AFAIK.

Chipped consoles are also used to play backups and homebrew, though, and are not in themselves (AFAIK/IANAL) illegal to own. They are, however, strongly discouraged by the big corporations who make the consoles, and who have aquarium tanks full of lawyers at the ready... as do ATT and Apple.

This is actually explicitly legal. In an attempt to defend their lock-in business model the phone company previously tried to prohibit flashing their firmware under the DMCA. They later decided the only purpose to of this was to support a business model and hence they added it to the DMCA exception list.

Soldering on jumper wires is only for experimenting. If it really can't be done from software alone, what's needed is a a PC board test fixture. [testelectronics.com] Once you have one of those set up for the job, connecting to the right spots is easy. With that, and a control PC programmed to do all the necessary downloads and updates, the whole operation can be done in a minute or two per phone.

Coming soon to the back room of an off-brand cell phone store near you.

The kid got an interview on CNBC. Not quite fifteen minutes of fame but at least a couple. He also managed to get in a plug for "information wants to be free" and to note that what he did is explicitly legal.

It`s cheaper by about 100$, with probarly the same features(ofc in the iPhone the cost of AT&T monopoly is not included)

I'm pretty interested in the OpenMoko project myself, but let's be realistic here.

1) Noone's going to know about it but Slashdot nerds. It may sell alright and be moderately succesful, but nothing like the iPhone.
2) The Phase 2 version of the phone (the one intended for mass market) will cost $450 [openmoko.org] for the base model, or $600 for the Advanced (developer's) version. That makes the base model $50 cheaper than the 4GB iPhone, and $150 cheaper than the 8GB iPhone, but there's also much less storage spac

Open software and propetiary software without the need for some stupid licenses, resulting in much wider selection

I'm not quite sure what you mean here, since the application development aspect of the iPhone hacking community requires no licencese and is totally open. In fact I daresay there are a lot more iPhone applications right now than for OpenMoko...

I love the idea of OpenMoko and may get one myself. But if you think it's at the same level as the iPhone, that's just being delusional and check-list c